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Sleep Apnea Syndrome
"SAS" (Sleep Apnea Syndrome) is a question of growing concern due to a problem of a dozing-off drive that recently happened to Sanyo-shinkansen. "SAS" is one type of "SDB (Sleep Disordered Breathing)" which causes abnormal breathing during sleep. "SAS" is relatively common in obese persons. As a result of search with keywords "sleep" plus "apnea" associated with "SAS" on the search engine of computers in the Industrial Property Digital Library of the Japanese Patent Office, approximately one hundred fifty laid-open official gazettes to Japanese patent applications have been located. These official gazettes primarily relate to inventions directed to therapeutic medicines, medical appliances to be used during sleep and diagnostic apparatuses. Among them, there were eleven patented inventions. Famous Dr. Nakamatsu filed a patent application for an invention entitled "sleep apnea syndrome counteraction apparatus." Other than the above Shinkansen case, "SAS" is suspected as a possible cause of a nuclear accident, a tanker accident and so forth. Experts also pointed out that further study of "SAS" is required. Accordingly, the number of applications for "SAS"-related inventions may increase to some extent. |
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